In the first part of my sabbatical I submitted three papers. One was already written but needed to be revised. One was partially written but needed a ton of work. One I wrote from scratch. They all came back to me with revise and resubmit decisions. The first one was SUCH a painful revision. One of the reviewers had said that Topic A and Topic B were not related, but I disagreed with her assessment. (I was saying that our data on Topic A had implications for Topic B; she said that wasn't plausible and I should rewrite the intro and the discussion to exclude Topic B altogether.) I, however, am not a subject matter expert on Topic A or Topic B, and so it was a mighty slog to respond to that particular piece of feedback. It sounds a little silly to call it grueling, but my brain felt like it had been to the brain equivalent of a Pilates Reformer class after spending too many months at home on the brain couch eating Brain Doritos. Anyway, it's back under review.
The paper that I wrote from scratch came back with the easiest comments, but I didn't realize until I got in there and started editing that they were going to bug the SNOT out of me. One of my reviewers appears to be a non-native English speaker, and she had lots of Thoughts about my writing. She did not want me to expand my theoretical framework; she didn't have any issues with the fact that I couldn't report the lengths of the follow-up interviews because -- whoops! -- the audio files were deleted accidentally. But she does not like my long sentences, and she does not like "it" as a subject. Did I know that it is better (whoops, did it again) to avoid using "it" as the subject of a clause? I was so mad, stupid mad, about those comments, but I got the paper resubmitted.
I am currently working on the final set of revisions. Generally with an R&R you have comments from the editor, from two reviewers, and from the editorial office. I've done everything except the R1 comments, and they are tough. They're tough in a good way; this is peer review working as it is supposed to work. But man, I am finding it difficult and stressful. This is for the journal where the Heartbreak Paper met its first crushing rejection after extensive revision. It is entirely possible that I could pour my heart and brainpower into these revisions and R1 would still say "nope, insufficient" and recommend rejecting the manuscript. Peer review isn't supposed to work like that -- my PhD advisor calls it an indication of a poorly managed review -- but sometimes it does.
Lessons learned from sabbatical: I love academic writing, I love reviewing the literature, I love analyzing data. If I block off the time to do those things without any distractions, it makes me extraordinarily happy (whoops, there's another "it" as a subject again; it's a wonder they let me out of high school (dammit, there's another one in the selfsame sentence where I'm complaining about them! they're everywhere!). But you can't get papers published unless you can get them through peer review, and peer review makes me grumpy and anxious.
I have been casting about for a tidy philosophical ending to this post, but that's what I've got for now: grumpy, anxious, have to get it done anyway.
Recent Comments